The Nevada plan: Reintroduce Reid

NORTH LAS VEGAS — Four years ago in this sprawling desert town, a powerful labor union abruptly withdrew its endorsement of Republican Mayor Mike Montandon.

The reason, relayed to Montandon by a top union official: “Harry told us to.”

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Harry Reid’s power is the stuff of legend in Nevada. But as the Senate majority leader prepares for his 2010 reelection run, voters back home are beginning to ask what’s in it for them.

Nevada’s unemployment rate is 12.7 percent, 3 percentage points higher than the national average. Las Vegas has the highest foreclosure rate of any big city in the country. And economic forecasters are sounding the alarm about an impending crash in the state’s commercial real estate market.

It’s all taking a toll on Reid. While Reid may be at the peak of his power in Washington, a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll out earlier this month showed him trailing two potential GOP challengers. And Reid’s in-state approval rating stands at just 36 percent — statistically indistinguishable from the 35 percent approval rating of his adulterous Republican colleague, Sen. John Ensign.

Reid dismisses the polling, complaining that reporters “run to it like it’s sugar coming from some place.” But he admits he’s not “boasting” about his own private polls — which Democratic sources say show him with just single-digit leads over his likely GOP challengers — and his campaign is looking like the work of a man running to save his career.

Reid’s advisers say they are plotting the most ambitious and aggressive campaign Nevada has ever seen, an effort centered on an ad campaign that one Democratic source said will eat up a staggering 75 percent of the $20 million to $25 million Reid is expected to spend on his reelection.

“I think he needs to reintroduce himself to Nevadans,” said Sig Rogich, a Republican consultant who is the senator’s longtime friend and is advising his campaign.

It’s a startling thing to say about a man who’s been in public life for more than four decades. But Reid’s advisers believe he’s suffering in the polls because hundreds of thousands of new voters have moved into the state since 1998, when Reid last engaged in a fiercely competitive campaign.

Of the state’s 1.3 million registered voters, 256,000 — or nearly 20 percent — are new to the rolls since Reid last ran for reelection in 2004. They may be more familiar with Reid as the fierce partisan who went head to head with George W. Bush — or worked hand in hand with Barack Obama — than with Reid as the local pol who delivers for the folks back home.

So Reid’s campaign will highlight a series of things — big and small — that the senator has done for the state, whether it’s funding a road project in his tiny hometown of Searchlight, or battling the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, or helping arrange financing for the $8.5 billion-plus City Center casino project on the Las Vegas strip.

The campaign won’t try to distance Reid from Obama, but it will certainly point out differences between the majority leader and the president, including on gun rights.

Of Nevada’s 17 counties, Reid must win only the most populated one: Clark County — the heavily Democratic region that includes Las Vegas. If he wins there by a comfortable margin and remains competitive in Washoe County, which includes Reno and an emerging Democratic majority, Democratic strategists believe that he’ll have a solid shot of winning the election.

But Republicans say that the short field helps them. They say it will take just $10 million to mount a credible campaign in the Reno and Las Vegas media markets and that the big financial advantage they expect Reid to have won’t actually be able to buy him much.

And they are preparing to use Reid’s power against him, saying that Nevada has suffered while he has sought to advance his party’s interests — a potent argument that worked to bring down Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in his 2004 campaign in South Dakota.